Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Dale Russakoff is the author of the new book The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools. It examines what happened after Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announced a $100 million gift to the Newark, N.J., schools in 2010. Russakoff worked for The Washington Post as a reporter for 28 years. She lives in Montclair, N.J.

Q:
Why did you decide to write The Prize?

A:
I had in mind there was a book here when the [Mark] Zuckerberg gift [to the
Newark schools in 2010] was announced on Oprah. There was a little item in TheStar-Ledger that it was about to happen. I was sitting and watching it, and
hearing these dreams that these powerful men had for the Newark school
district, I thought it would be absolutely fascinating.

I
thought it would be a real opportunity for the education reform movement—what
does it mean? I started off thinking it would be a magazine piece, but I
realized I didn’t just want to do one story. I had been a journalist for 30
years [without writing a book]—I felt this really was my book.

Q:
How did you research the book?

A:
I decided I wanted to get as close to the people coming up with the strategies
and plans, and at the same time be at ground level with the parents, students,
and teachers when the reforms are coming at you.

Working
at The Washington Post and covering government, I’m interested in the big
public-policy ideas that you can trace down to the person whose life is
supposed to change—and does it? Why or why not? I wanted to follow it back and
forth between reporting on the people behind the effort and the people in the
neighborhood.

Q:
You write, “What [then-Newark Mayor Cory] Booker, [New Jersey Governor Chris] Christie,
and Zuckerberg set out to achieve in Newark had not been
accomplished in modern times—turning a failing urban school district into one
of universally high achievement.” Why was Newark selected for this project, and
how successful do you believe it’s been so far?

A:
Newark was selected because Cory Booker and Chris Christie got together and
decided they wanted to make this a national model, and they would need a
philanthropist to fund it. It was selected because Cory Booker is an effective
fundraiser. He was able to sweep Mark Zuckerberg off his feet.

From
what I understand, people close to Zuckerberg and to Booker said there wasn’t a
lot of due diligence Zuckerberg put into this. He was pretty wowed by Booker
and Christie. It was his first act as a philanthropist.

He
had never been to Newark. He thought at the time that you actually could go to
an urban district and come up with a model, and solve the educational issues
and apply them to [other] cities and change education in America.

That’s
how a startup works, but not how schools and education work; there was not the
appreciation for how education works in each community and how it is its own
ecosystem. There is no model that you can scale up and apply to Chicago, Boise,
Toledo. I think Zuckerberg did learn that.

Q:
How successful do you think it was?

A:
I think people like Zuckerberg, Booker, and Christie would say their great
success was the [increase] in students at charter schools…now on the path to 40
percent.

The
downside is for the district schools; the money goes with the kids and the
district schools were put in a state of fiscal crisis…[there were] layoffs, the
system is in an upheaval.

They
put effort into improving the system…but you don’t have resources to deal with
the problems that children bring into the classrooms. If you consolidate two of
the lowest-performing schools, the schools don’t have enough social workers,
guidance counselors—they’re overwhelmed…

Q:
How was the book’s title picked, and how would you answer the question posed in
the subtitle?

A:
It’s a constant battle. The publisher came up with the subtitle. [At first I
thought] the book doesn’t pose or answer that question—but it is a big question
in education. There’s always a battle between [administrators] and unions, now
there’s a grand battle…the philanthropists are now part of the mix.

President
Obama and [Secretary of Education] Arne Duncan with Race to the Top; merit pay is a big factor—there are
all these other forces in the last 15 years that are now part of the struggle.
That is the big context for the book. And "The Prize" represents the money and
power sitting in the school district budget….

Q:
You include many stories about individual students and teachers in the book.
How did you find the specific people to include, and how have they responded to
the book?

A:
The teachers and students—that came from spending time in individual district
schools. I chose Central High School because Ras Baraka was the principal. I
had no idea he would become mayor [of Newark], but he was a big factor in the
grassroots movement, he had a longtime role as an activist and school leader,
and he was the son of [activist and poet] Amiri Baraka.

I
wanted to get to see what he was doing within the school, and I [also] spent time
in two schools in the poorest ward of Newark, the South Ward…these schools had
some of the biggest challenges. From having been in these schools, I found
certain teachers and students who illustrated the challenges and the
possibilities.

These
people have been the most enthusiastic about the book. That’s been the most
rewarding thing about it. They feel their voices have been heard. In the
process, [it seemed] people on the ground didn’t have a voice.

Q:
What surprised you most as you worked on the book?

A:
I guess I was surprised that $100 million went so quickly. I was stunned to
learn that the Newark school district [budget] is $1 billion a year. Five years
at $20 million a year, it puts it in perspective: How could it be an amount of
money that really transformed what happened in Newark?

There
were years of corruption and mismanagement. Mark Zuckerberg has an enormous
fortune, and gave a seemingly infinite amount to Newark, but it’s little
compared to the amount that goes to the schools every day.

Also,
I was surprised by the amount of money the schools have to do business with
contractors and consultants. Public education is a $600 billion enterprise—as
big as the defense budget, really. Trying to make sure the money is spent in
the best interest of the kids, and not of whoever is trying to get the money,
is overwhelming.

One
dollar of $10 goes to consulting firms—that’s $20 million. There was some good
work, but a lot wasn’t well spent. There’s a quote from one of the community
leaders: Everyone’s getting paid, and [a student] still can’t read.

Q:
Are you working on another book?

A:
I’m not….I almost feel this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It represents so
much to me that I’ve cared about as a journalist and as a person.

Q:
Anything else we should know?

A:
People keep saying, What would you do?...Mark Zuckerberg had a lot of naivete
at the outset. He thought he saw what was wrong, how to fix it. Those of us on
the outside don’t have the ability to script a fix.

What’s
powerful is one charter school I saw up close. It got more per-pupil money to
the school rather than the central administration. It used the extra money to
build support around the kids and the teachers, so when crises happened in
kids’ lives, the school was prepared to deal with them.

When
kids struggled to keep up, they had resources for them. There were two
certified teachers in the classroom for K-3, and a certified tutor per grade
for K-3. When somebody couldn’t keep up, there was a tutor….

It
seemed as if you can get more resources to the building, and use it in a way
that supports learning and teachers, you can make a difference in a
high-poverty environment.

I
felt if there was a way to do a forensic audit of the money in the school
districts, how traditional schools support principals and build strategic
support for kids and teachers, it could make a difference. It’s saying to the
community, you have to take the resources and address this, not have a model.

People
say, What’s right, top-down or bottom-up reform? It’s a combination. You have
to have the resources and run it well but also have support at the classroom
and school level. That wasn’t the plan in Newark.

Eric Lotke is the author most recently of the novel Making Manna. He also has written the novel 2044. An attorney and advocate, he has written for a variety of publications, including The Huffington Post and Truthout, and he has worked for the Service Employees International Union and the Campaign for America's Future. He is based in Washington, D.C.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Making
Manna?

A: Hmmm. The world is a mess. The newspapers are all bad
news. Iraq, the economy, Congress … yuck.

Well, I didn’t want to write about that. I wanted to write
something nice. Something happy. Escapism. You deserve a break today. You
bought my book: I owe you a good time.

Except that would be boring. I couldn’t go that far. It’s a
happy tale but between the lines is a critical social commentary, especially
about our justice system. Making Manna is about victims who don’t get what they
need – protection and healing — because the system is too busy locking people
up for no good reason.

But that’s only if you want to think about it. What the
pages show is clever, creative, enterprising people finding their way. The
critical social commentary is wrapped up in a story of resilience and hope.

Where exactly did the idea come from? Spoiler alert! I once
worked on a death penalty case where the defendant was the product of an
incestuous rape. Talk about bad news. I started there but gave it a better
ending.

Q: Poverty is a constant theme throughout the book. How do
you see it affecting your characters?

A: What an interesting question. I think the characters are
like a lot of poor people. First, they don’t see themselves as poor. They don’t
have time to be poor; they’re too busy making ends meet. They need to work an
extra shift so they can fix that door.

So at the same time that they are defined by poverty and
scarcity, they are also defined by constant success at putting food on the
table. A lot of American poverty looks like that.

Q: How did you come up with the book's title, and what does
it signify for you?

A: First, Making Manna is about food. Food appears
throughout the book, as a matter of sustenance and independence. In the
beginning, the characters learn that boiling spaghetti is cheaper than the
McDonald’s Dollar Menu. By the end they’ve opened a bakery.

Second, it’s about more than food. In the Bible, Manna comes
from heaven. In the real world, we need to make our own. Whether Manna is
bread, money, free time or a legal action, we have to make it ourselves. Manna
won’t come to us.

But please don’t understand this as rugged individualism.
Yes, they have to make manna on their own. But they aren’t truly alone. They
don’t make manna by themselves. Everybody is always giving and receiving help
from others.

They survive as a community. When you need a tool, someone
else has it on their shelf …and can even show you how to use it.

Q: You've written that the book is a Horatio Alger story.
What do you see as the elements of a modern-day Horatio Alger tale?

A: Thanks, I do think of it as Horatio Alger. I present it
that way in my "coming out"
blog post.

Horatio Alger does two things. First, he’s full of good
old-fashioned virtue. Alger shows that you can do the right thing and still
come out ahead. Nice guys do not need to finish last.

Second, Horatio Alger shows readers the truth behind things
they see but don’t think about. In Alger’s case it was beggars and street
urchins. In my case, it’s women who clean houses for a living and poor kids in
rich suburbs.

I also show a justice system that looks nothing like CSI.
The real justice system isn’t about crime labs and DNA exonerations. The real
justice system is about “Hands up, don’t shoot” and cops who book you so they
can get paid overtime for your court date.

Hollywood shows us courtroom dramas with explosive closing
arguments. I show people with really bad lawyers who accept really bad plea
bargains, and kids who miss their parents in prison.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Sadly, right now I’m a little too much like my
characters: I’m working on finding a job. But I’d like my next novel to be
about unions. In Making Manna, unions are just part of the scenery. Life gets
better after they get a union job.

But unions deserve more than that. Workers organizing to get
their fair share – that deserves a book of its own.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Here are some things I didn’t learn until after the book
was out. First, a smart reader described it as a “coming of age” story of both
the mother and son at the same time. I think that’s exactly right. The mother
was so young when he was born! She has so much to figure out, and so does he.

Second, I’ve been surprised by how popular the book is among
teenaged girls. Just like the characters, they push past the scary beginning
and pull it together in the end.

Lastly, here is something I didn’t figure out until I was
discussing Making Manna in book groups. Really, the book is about parenting. I
couldn’t have written it if I weren’t a dad.

Maggie Messitt is the author of The Rainy Season: Three Lives in the New South Africa. She lived in South Africa from 2003 to 2011. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Creative Nonfiction and Essay Daily. She is a scholar-in-residence at Elizabethtown College's Bowers Writers House and an Ohio University John Cady Doctoral Fellow.

Q:
In your book, you focus on three people. How do their lives exemplify
post-apartheid South Africa?

A:
Collectively, Regina, Thoko, Dankie and the community in which they live offer
readers a way inside rural South Africa 10 years after the nation’s first
democratic elections.

Unlike most narratives (in literature, television, and
film) set inside urban townships or colonialesque farms, The Rainy Season
brings you inside a former apartheid-era homeland and the lives of three
generations, three individuals tackling life in the Rainbow Nation a decade
after apartheid, illustrating the hopes, dreams, and expectations (realistic
and utopian) that came with this transition.

Q: How
difficult was it to immerse yourself in the life of the village?

A: As
a storyteller, immersion is a form of reportage that allows a community or
character to reveal story, as opposed to me starting with pre-conceived ideas and
seeking stories to fit inside an already established framework. And, because of
this, it means just hanging out, spending time, listening, and letting people
get used to you being around.

Having
called South Africa home for more than two years at that point, reporting and
writing from inside the village of Acornhoek (where Rooibok is located), it was
much easier than if I’d parachuted into the community as a complete outsider.
Let’s say, I was a partial outsider.

But, let’s face it, immersion of any kind
requires delicate and slow starts; it requires building trust; it requires
being open about what you’re doing and seeking permission from the key players;
and it requires genuine curiosity overlapped with good intention.

Most
importantly, in order to write what eventually became The Rainy Season, it
required me to find a few people who were willing to let me inside their
lives—and not in a small way—for a long time. I spent six months laying the
foundation necessary for me to hang out in this way.

I
think and write about immersion (from ethics to process) a lot. If you’re
curious and want to learn more, you can find a recent craft essay of mine in
the Summer 2015 issue of Creative Nonfiction.

Q: What
has happened to the village in the years since the time you’re writing about in
the book?

A: Well,
the Epilogue actually gives you taste of how the community has changed and the
lives you follow inside The Rainy Season, but, on a very basic level, it has
grown and prosperity (in a small way) is showing its face.

That said, this
could mean a family living in tin shacks in 2005 may now have a small cement
block, two-room home (constructed by the family), or someone has upgraded from
mud-packed buildings to brick buildings. It’s all relative.

If anyone wants to
take an aerial peek at the evolution, you can do so via Google maps—it’s kind
of amazing—flipping through the years, watching more homes pop up and seeing
the main street of Acornhoek get a few new buildings, but mostly fixing old
buildings.

But
what feels most important to say is that the stories of rural South Africa are
still as universal today as they were 10 years ago—the time in which the book
is set.

It is filled with concerns and stories that American readers should
also see in the world around them: poverty and the extreme gap between the rich
and the poor, unemployment, the right to basic resources and a good education,
the divide between the rural and urban experience, protesting against one's
government, the rights and desire for a simple and safe life, and a racism that
sits inside a country's bones. These are universal storylines that will likely
continue for a long time.

Q: What
has the response been among the people you know in South Africa to your book?

A: Having
called South Africa home for eight years, there are so many people to think
about when it comes to feedback on my book. Most importantly, however, I was
eager to get copies of The Rainy Season into the hands of Regina, Thoko,
Dankie, and others throughout Acornhoek.

Given the postal problems—after a long
postal strike and a continued backlog of parcels needing delivery—I was nervous
they’d never make their way, so a friend visiting the U.S. brought them back to
South Africa’s Lowveld for me and delivered them—a courier directly to
Rooibok!

For the most part, people have
been excited seeing the maps of their community and reading the now decade-old
stories of their lives. Regina’s granddaughter was six years old then, and now is a beautiful 16-year-old girl! Before the books arrived, she was messaging
me via WhatsApp asking questions about her cameos on the page.

Sure, I know it
is difficult for some to replay difficult times in their lives as they read a
book, but, overall, the response has been really positive and filled with joy
that their lives and their voices have found a way to reach people far from
Rooibok.

They knew from the start that this was a journey to share their story,
the good and the bad, the simple and the complex. And the women of
Mapusha feel like the largest group of mothers beaming with pride.

And,
well, I am sure they thought the day would never come—it has been a decade!

Q: What
are you working on now?

A: I
have several books in draft form or partially started—a frustrating state—but
in 2013, there was a story that required me to put everything else to the side.
I have heard people say this book chose me, but that wasn’t an experience I’d
had up until then.

I’m currently working on a hybrid of investigation and
memoir (far outside my comfort zone), the story of my aunt—an actress, writer,
and visual artist who went missing in 2009.After her case went cold and the world seemed to move forward, I
couldn’t in some ways.

But,
instead of focusing on her absence, I was drawn to understand her story and the
intersections of our lives. I wanted to learn from her and to do so, I found
myself travelling the country, using her letters as my compass, knocking on
strangers' doors to see inside the homes in which she once lived, finding
friends who were critical to (or passers through) her life at different junctures,
and tracking down her art or the spaces in which she created.

She took me to
Washington, Oregon, New York, Virginia, Illinois, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Hawaii—in and out of small arts communities across
America and often, back again, to Greenwich Village, N.Y.—and through her life on
and off the grid. I became a collector of artifact and quotidian details. And,
ultimately, I am exploring the idea of home and family, mental health and the
arts, and one’s desire to connect and feel connected.

This
is ongoing and has had so many unexpected twists and turns, including my aunt’s
very cold case turning warm. As I enter the new academic year, I’ve been
blessed with a service-free John Cady Graduate Fellowship at Ohio University
(where I am finishing my Ph.D. in Creative Nonfiction) and a Scholar-in-Residence
position at Bowers Writers House at Elizabethtown College (PA). Both afford me
the time to focus on writing this very personal and complex book.

Q:
How did you come up with the idea for this book, and have you always been
obsessed with your own hair?

A:
The response to my previous anthology, What My Mother Gave Me, was intense, and
women kept saying to me, “We have to keep having these conversations.” I think
they meant public conversations about issues that really matter to us – in that
cases gifts of all kinds from our mothers.

I
kept pitching ideas to Algonquin in this spirit, and one day they said: We have
an idea for you – hair. That’s all they needed to say and I got it.

It
just so happened that I’d had the idea of doing an anthology about women and
their hair eight years before, but I couldn’t gather up enough writers to
contribute. Well, with Algonquin’s interest, it was much easier. The rest is
hair history.

Have
I always been obsessed with my hair?

Is
there any woman who isn’t obsessed with her hair? I was low-to-medium obsessed
when all I wanted to do was blow dry it smooth, though since I work at home and
could for long periods in isolation, it was not a major obsession.

But
when I started to go gray many years ago, I was pretty clear for a very long
time that I wanted to color my hair. That’s something of an obsession, when you
think about the time, the money, and the chemicals involved.

I’ve
changed my mind recently, or it was changed for me: my hairdresser dyed my hair
black, I guess by mistake, and I didn’t want to spend the next six months
making it lighter, and I gave up and let it go gray. There’s a bunch of gray
and still a lot of brown, and I’m grateful for that.

So
now I’m obsessed with whether I really want to have gray hair. I’m trying to
grow into the idea of it. By the way, my essay for Me, My Hair and I is called,
“No, I Won’t Go Gray.” It might need tweaking. Or tweeting.

Q:
How did you pick the contributors to this volume, and were you surprised by any
of the overall themes that emerged?

A:
The folks at Algonquin and I had a list of issues we wanted addressed and we
came up with a list of potential writers. Some of the issues were cultural,
racial and medical.

And
then there were others that arose. The linguist Deborah Tannen wrote about why
mothers and daughters have such complicated issues around hair. Journalist Maria
Hinojosa wrote about how her hair became an issue in her marriage – when her
employer wanted it to be slick and her husband wanted it to be natural and sexy.

There
were a few writers I didn’t know but whose pictures told me they had some
serious hair wisdom. And there were a bunch of interesting writers to whom I
just said, “So what about your hair?” and out poured these stories.

What
surprised me was the intensity of many of the stories they told – sibling
rivalries, vast sums of money and emotion spent on hair products and hair
salons, and the relationships that women have with their hairdressers.

Several
in the book have been getting their hair done by the same people – I mean,
teams of people – for 20 years. I was an innocent in some of these matters. I
actually didn’t know that “product” is the plural of “product.”

Q:
One of the issues running through several essays involves health. How did you
balance the essays that touched on more serious themes with those that were
perhaps lighter?

A:
I wanted a mix of stories and tones, and there are two pieces in the book about
women who lost their hair after chemo. We had a third writer who expressed
interest, and we discussed whether that would be “too many” stories of that
kind, but the editor at Algonquin felt that each would be so different it
wouldn’t be an overload.

As
far as the others – I didn’t know in advance whose essays would be funny and
light and whose wouldn’t. And hair is such a deceptive subject that there’s a
lot of angst even when the surface looks frivolous.

At
first it seems like we’re just talking about what kind of haircut looks best
with the shape of your face but we’re really talking about how your father
didn’t want you to cut your hair when you were a teenager because he was an
immigrant with a chip on his shoulder and didn’t want to give up the memories
of his mother in the old country, whose hair hung all the way down her back
except for the day she cut it and you left the country on an ocean liner and
never saw her again.

So
no wonder you’re having a nervous breakdown just trying to pick out a haircut
from a magazine. This stuff goes very deep!

But,
seriously, one of the lighter pieces in the book is Patricia Volk’s
“Frizzball.” I guess you can tell something about her tone from the title.

Q:
How did your experience editing this book compare with the experiences of
editing your previous collections?

A:
It might be harder to write about hair than about mothers or mentors.

Q:
What are you working on now?

A:
Right now, I’m trying to figure out what to do with my hair when I go out
promoting this book. When I talked in public about What My Mother Gave Me, I
always brought the scarf my mother gave me that inspired the book. It was
pretty easy – and I couldn’t go wrong.

This
time, people are going to be scrutinizing my hair, and I still don’t know what
color or style or length it’s going to be on pub date.

Q:
Anything else we should know?

A:
I’m still not very good at the beauty and fashion part of life. I often put on
my eyeliner on the subway on my way to wherever I’m going. I have a feeling
I’ll figure out what to do with my hair the morning of the first event. Or
maybe that afternoon. It’s probably too late once I’m on the subway.

Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of the new novel Gold Fame Citrus. She also has written the story collection Battleborn, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Granta and The Paris Review. She teaches at the University of Michigan, and is the co-director of the Mojave School, a creative writing program in rural Nevada for teenagers.

Q: How did you come up with the world you portray in Gold
Fame Citrus, and how did current-day drought problems play into your writing?

A: I built the world piecemeal; different elements had their
roots in historical moments. Once I figured out that I wanted to write about
drought, I read a lot about the Dust Bowl, and the environmental contributing
factors for that, and the displacement of those people. It got me reading about
migration, and the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II.

It firmed up my ideas about what would happen to the people
in the West [in the novel]. I found myself reaching back. Somebody pointed out
that the book pretends to be about the future, but it’s much more so about the
past.

Q: How did you come up with your characters Luz and Ray?

A: With Luz, in my research as I was reading about the
California water wars of the early 20th century, in the book
Cadillac Desert—it’s one of my favorite books…I reread it as I was writing the
book—there is a figure in there, a baby who was adopted by the water authority
as a propaganda tool: If we don’t make the aqueduct system, what will become of
this baby?

I thought, What happened to the baby when she was a young
adult, and [saw she was] made into a propaganda symbol? I identified with her.
My dad died when I was very young, and I pretty quickly realized that [my
sister and I] were human beings [but] also symbols of the friend, the brother
they had lost. We looked like him. I was trying to make sense of how that made
me feel.

Ray is an amalgam of friends, particularly a friend who
passed away when I was in graduate school…there was room for [his type of] joy
and exhilaration in a drought-stricken wasteland.

Q: Did you know how the book would end before you started
writing, or did you make many changes as you went along?

A: I didn’t know it for a very long time, but at a certain
point, I had traveled to Owens Valley in California, ground zero for the
California water wars. I was a little stuck when I went there, and my husband
and I rented a cabin. I would hike in the morning and then write. It came to me
there. I started writing more explicitly about the landscape and the Sierras…it
clicked for me.

Q: Do you prefer writing novels or short stories?

A: I find short stories a lot better for my emotional well-being.
You can hold the whole thing in your head at one time. At some point it clicks
and then it’s pretty much done.

A novel is too big to hold in your head at one time. It took
me five years to write this novel. I had none of the boosts you get from
finishing something. The analogy I’m using is to Super Mario Brothers, when
Mario eats the mushroom and can jump very high. Writing a novel, there are no
mushrooms.

Q: Which authors have inspired you?

A: Cadillac Desert is very important to me. John McPhee’s
writing…The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams…Play It As It Lays and Run
River. There’s a lot of Joan Didion in the book. In a way, it’s a loving
tribute to Joan Didion. Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time…

Q: Why did you choose
"It Shouldn't Have Been Beautiful"--a line from one of the poems in
the book--as the book's title, and what does it signify for you?

A: In both my poems and
essays, I’m interested in seeing what there is to notice that may have gone
unnoticed, or hasn’t traditionally merited attention.

I’m interested in paying
attention to the aesthetic, moral, civic, spiritual questions and demands that
are called up in the act of looking – an act which is almost always full of
complexities, contradictions, surprise, and mystery. I’m interested in
uncategorizable feelings or moments – moments that I’m convinced are inklings
of bigger questions.

What I’d call “beautiful” is
often a little off center. The objects or instances or beings that elicit that
particular response, beautiful, are so capacious … sometimes, too, they’re
attached to systems that, in their perfect workings, are themselves beautiful,
but under-sung.

This sense of surprise, this
off-centeredness, or drive to see a thing slant felt like a good lens for the
book’s intentions. Also, to give proper credit here, my husband first suggested
it as a possibility, among others, and, truth be known, he’s a master titler. I
owe him big time for a lot of good titles over the years.

Q: These poems have been
described as "compact." What do you think of that description, and
why do you write in the form you've chosen?

A: Well, the compact is often
pretty enormous in what it contains. Sure, “brief” things can be cut-short
things, tossed-off things, things capped or lopped-- or can reveal a skittishness about the
supposedly short attention span of the contemporary human.

I’d like to think about
brevity as a depth experience rather than one that responds to the inability to
pay attention. I liked working with a form that allowed for a lot of space
around it. I liked the combination of density (layered thought, heightened
moment, precise incident, lasered attention) and spaciousness.

And I liked, too, the way a
focused thought can ring out, behave like a saying or proverb or riddle, and
engage the air around it in its blooming.

Q: In addition to poetry, you
also write essays. Do you have a preference?

A: It’s not so much a
preference as a sense of great fortune to have these two very different
musculatures to work with. I can work long or short, depending on the feel of
the day.

This is not to say that the
poems are in any way easier or take less time – just that the physical
sensation, the sense of time and space is very different and I like, need, am
attracted to both.

Sometimes, actually, sort of
often now, the essays behave in highly lyrical ways and move about the way
poems traditionally do, by leaps of thought and image, and the poems behave
like small essays, organizing and presenting a thought or concept. The
crossover, the freedom of that, is exciting.

Q: Which authors have
inspired you?

A: Always a question that
draws a blank! I think what’s often meant is: which authors are you somehow aware
of as influencing your work. The question may suggest, too, that writers can
trace the origins of certain gestures or subjects back to a beloved author, or
early influence – and articulate a sense of an orderly heritage.

I’m not being cagey here, or
resisting talking about my beloveds for the sake of appearing to be
spontaneously born of a god’s forehead, or in order to come off as untouched
and pure.

A whole range of writers have
been important to me – by introducing angles of vision, by offering challenges
to the soul, by stirring generative envy, by making me feel very very small and
thus forcing growth – so, to name just a very few: James Baldwin, Dickinson,
Neruda, Whitman, and recently, say, Claudia Rankine, Mary Ruefle, Larry Levis,
Elizabeth Kolbert, Ann Pancake, Terrance Hayes, David Foster Wallace, and early
on, a whole host of post-WWII Eastern European poets -- and then, writer
friends, of course, whose own astonishing work I’ve seen through many stages,
whose ethics and aesthetics make me want to write better every day.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m mostly working on
easing It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful into the world, and that means doing an
awful lot of traveling and readings.

Writing-wise, I’ve got a few
essays under construction (a new one, “Scream, or Neverminding,” will be out
soon in The Georgia Review) and other than that, I’m trying to keep in more of
less daily touch with very new, small sparks, trying to hang out with the
mysteriously hovering stuff and get some of it down and get a sense of what’s
coming next.

Q:
How did you come up with your INTRIGUE concept, and what do you see as its most
important ideas?

A:
I had the privilege of helping to run the Maui Writers Conference—what Cannes
is to the film world, we were to the publishing world--and the first day, a
woman walked out of her pitch, tears in her eyes, and said she just saw her
dream go down the drain. An editor had said, “Tell me in 60 seconds why [your
book] is interesting,” and her mind went blank. She knew she had lost her opportunity.

I
realized that talent and hard work matter, but if we can’t quickly get our
point across, we’ll never succeed at the level we deserve.

How
can we get it across? In my research, I found out about “INFObesity”[people
trying to consume too much information] and about a Harvard study [revealing
that] goldfish have longer attention spans than we do. So I understood that
it’s not just about getting it across clearly, but about getting it across
quickly, so impatient people with the attention span of a goldfish can [follow
it].

The
opposite of INFObesity is INTRIGUE. That’s how I came up with the concept. I
turned it into an acronym—that gives it an organizational framework.

Q:
And what are a couple of things you find the most important about the concept
of INTRIGUE?

A:
If I were to pick one concept, E.M. Forster was asked the purpose of life, and
he said, “Only connect.” We want to connect with people, but we often don’t. No
one teaches us how to connect.

The
goal of the book, and of INTRIGUE, is that it’s a two-way process. We connect
about getting attention—people are busy, and choose to give us their time—and
it’s also about giving attention: being intriguing and intrigued. When we do
both is when we connect.

Q:
You write that “if you can’t get people’s attention, you’ll never get their
connection.” Has it become more difficult in recent years to get attention?

A:
One hundred percent. That’s not just my opinion; there are lots of statistics
and research. It’s become more difficult. There are 140-character tweets,
there’s Snapchat. If you’re long, you’re gone.

Q:
So what are some ways to get attention now, vs. how it might have been 25 or 50
years ago?

A:
You understand that the clock starts ticking the second we start talking...If
we’re at work, and you say, “I need to talk to you about something,” people are
in a state of anxiety [about how long the conversation will take]. You could
say, “I know you’re busy, may I have two minutes of your time.” If we don’t
take responsibility for people’s time anxiety, even if it’s important, we’re
going to lose them.

Q:
One of the tactics you discuss is the use of humor. How can humor help in a
variety of situations?

A:
It’s called comic relief for a reason. When things are tense, when we’re in the
midst of a conflict, or a serious situation, the role of humor is a relief. We
can get along.

Often
people say, “But I’m not funny.” We all have funny things happen around us. We
can keep our antenna up for what makes us laugh.

I
was in the San Francisco airport, and here comes a very tall man. …When he came
closer, I saw that his T-shirt said, “No, I’m not a basketball player.” On the
back, it said, “Are you a jockey?”

I
laughed, and wanted to connect with him. He told me he grew a foot between the
ages of about 13 and 16, and everyone was making smart-aleck remarks….[In
response] he has a whole closet of shirts [that he wears, with similar
messages].

We
can be frustrated by something, but coming up with comebacks if people say
something that might offend us, thinking about the power of using humor, you’re
turning a person from an adversary into an ally.

Q:
Another strategy in the book is the use of real-life examples—something you
just did in the last answer! What are the benefits of this approach?

A:
If you want to connect, replace an explanation with an example. When you hear
“For example,” you perk up. You’re in the real world now.

I
was a pitch coach for Dolphin Tank, a kinder version of Shark Tank. A woman was
trying to get funding for a hook in a car to put your purse on. I thought,
“Really?”

She
was smart. She hauled in a full-size car seat to the front of the room, and put
her hands on an imaginary wheel, and said, “Have you ever been driving
along…and your purse falls off [the seat]”? A man stood up and said, “I’m
taking two!”—one for his wife and one for his daughter. She went from “Really?”
to “I’m taking two!” in 30 seconds…

Q:
What are you working on now?

A:
I’ve always been drawn to water. I’m setting off on a year-long adventure,
visiting [places including] the Florida Keys, Niagara Falls…and writing about
it: water as a metaphor for what really matters. I will continue to speak and
consult, but I’ll do a lot more writing.

Q:
Anything else we should know?

A:
I’m hoping the book practices what it preaches. People may think, “I’m too
busy,” or “I don’t pitch.” One reason people endorsed it is that all the
chapters are under 10 pages. You can dip in, and use it in your personal life
or your professional life—and transform the results.

It’s
not just hearing, “I landed a $10 million deal,” or, “I landed a book deal.”
It’s equally moving to me when someone says, “I can finally explain to my
8-year-old son what I do so he can understand.”

I
hope [readers] find it will change the way they communicate with people, and
help them connect.

About Me

Author, THE PRESIDENT AND ME: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE MAGIC HAT, new children's book (Schiffer, 2016). Co-author, with Marvin Kalb, of HAUNTING LEGACY: VIETNAM AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY FROM FORD TO OBAMA (Brookings Institution Press, 2011).